Dell Venue 10 7000 (Model 7040) Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
A superb high-resolution screen, great speakers, and a thin, attractive chassis—topped off by an unusual, easy-to-use keyboard dock—make this Venue one of the best convertible Android tablets out there. (But it's expensive.) Read More…

What We Liked…

Well-built and attractive

Great-looking high-definition screen

Excellent-sounding speakers

RealSense camera support

Well-designed keyboard dock

Great battery life

What We Didn’t…

Pricey

Side bezels are too narrow in landscape mode

Dell Venue 10 7000 (Model 7040) Review

Table of Contents

Introduction & Design

We’ve been looking at Dell’s Venue line of Android tablets (not to be confused with “Venue Pro,” the company’s Windows slates) for a few years now. It wasn’t, however, until February 2015’s review of the premium Venue 8 7000 that we really began to take notice of the family. Prior to the 7000 series, Dell’s Venue tablets were, for the most part, ho-hum, budget-friendly models not much different from many others on the market.

With the 7000 models, though, came a revelation. They had aluminum chassis, ultra-high-res displays, high-end sound and other hardware, and Intel’s RealSense 3D camera technology—in other words, a complete reversal, going from entry-level to premium, from previous Venue models. And now, with the $499-MSRP Venue 10 7000 Series, Dell elevates the Venue brand to an all-new level of performance and elegance.

We tested model 7040 in the new 10-inch family. As you’ll see in our Features section later on, in addition to RealSense, this Venue 10 kept many of the features that made the $399-list Venue 8 7000 such an interesting tablet. Meanwhile, this ultra-high-end slate is available at Dell.com in four configurations, starting with a stand-alone tablet with 16GB of storage at $499.

After that comes another stand-alone version, with 32GB of storage, at $549, followed by a combination tablet/keyboard dock with 16GB of storage ($629). Finally, there is the flagship configuration (our review unit), model 7040, with the keyboard dock and 32GB of storage for $679.

Okay, for starters: You’re probably thinking that every one of the above prices is way high for an Android tablet, and you’re right if you look at the field. Normally, we’d agree with you, but this Venue is, like a few other premium slates we’ve seen (such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S 10.5 and Sony’s Xperia Tablet Z2), in a word, elegant. Part of being elegant, of course, is the ability to command a high price. Also part of the deal: that you perform well. Like the Venue 8 7000 before it, as we'll discuss in the Performance section later on, the Intel Atom-based Venue 10 7040 did rather well on our battery of benchmark tests—especially our demanding battery-rundown test, which is a further key attribute of a premium tablet.

Unlike the Venue 8 7000, though, this Venue has several hardware features beyond an elegant appearance and 3D camera, starting with a barrel attached to the bottom edge. Somewhat reminiscent of the grip on Lenovo’s Yoga tablets, this not only holds the unit’s speakers, but also its battery, and it acts as the bulkier part of the hinge for attaching the tablet's matching keyboard dock. All of that we’ll discuss in more detail next in the section.

Meanwhile, each time we review one of these high-end Android slates, the question that inevitably arises is, is all this high-end hardware and elegant design worth the additional expense, considering that you can buy a not-so-fancy tablet for much less, or an Apple iPad for around the same bucks? Well, one mitigating factor: We are not seeing nearly as many new full-size (9-inch screen and above) Android models anymore, and especially not 10.5-inch slates like this one. Lately, 10-inch-class tablets have become somewhat scarce, and most of them are higher-end models like this one. (One of the most significant additions to the class is actually a Windows model: Microsoft's high-profile Surface 3, with a 10.8-inch screen and starting at the same $499.)

Even so, we’ve looked at and tested most or all of them, and few measure up to this Venue. Dell’s Venue 10 7000 Series, especially the two models bundled with Dell’s slick keyboard dock, is an impressive Android—even a suitable now-and-then laptop replacement for folks willing to settle for a 10.5-inch display.

Design

Unlike most other high-end tablets, which, as part of their overall comfort and charm, are usually designed to be thin and light, this Venue isn’t entirely so. While slightly less than a quarter of an inch thick over most of its surface area, as shown below, it’s about three-quarters of an inch thick at its bottom edge…

Furthermore, at 1.3 pounds, this Venue is a bit heavier than competing 10.5-inch tablets in general. Samsung’s recent quarter-inch-thick, 10.5-inch Galaxy Tab S, for example, weighs only 1.03 pounds. Much of this Venue’s weight, of course, is in that tubular bar on the tablet’s bottom edge. Not only does that barrel act as part of the hinge between the slate and its optional keyboard dock, but as mentioned, it holds a good-size battery and a pair of top-notch speakers.

Before laying ears on the speakers, though, let’s talk about the rest of the tablet’s external features, starting with the power/lock/sleep button, the volume rocker, and a microphone pinhole, all located on the upper-left edge. And, on the lower-right edge are a MicroSD card slot (occupied by a blank panel), a combination mini-USB/charging port, and an audio jack…

The MicroSD slot supports cards up to 512GB, or SDXC class, which is great, except that these huge-capacity cards cost $400 and beyond—nearly as much as the tablet. The good news is that we found some 256GB cards for less than $100. Combined with the 32GB onboard our test model, this Venue 10 supports storage options up to 544GB, which is enormous for an Android tablet, if you’re willing to spring for it.

This brings us back to the speakers, located in that barrel on the bottom edge of the tablet we’ve been talking about. Granted, tablet speakers just aren’t big enough to blast out terribly impressive sound, but this set does a little better than most. It’s plenty loud enough, though the louder you turn it up, the more you hear the overall tinniness and lack of bass—a problem consistent to tablet speakers.

Even so, this Venue sounds better than most other tablets out there today, which really isn’t saying much. It sounds best at about 75 percent volume, loud enough for personal video viewing. In fact, when combined with this Venue’s excellent high-res screen, the Venue 10 7040 tablet is great for watching movies, and even better with headphones. If you want to watch movies with friends and family, or share presentations or business materials with colleagues, you’ll get the best results with this slate’s built-in Miracast feature, Dell’s own Dell Cast, or Google’s Chromecast, all of which will help you to broadcast the screen contents to a television or another high-res monitor.

Table of Contents

Dell Venue 10 7000 (Model 7040)

Our Verdict:
A superb high-resolution screen, great speakers, and a thin, attractive chassis—topped off by an unusual, easy-to-use keyboard dock—make this Venue one of the best convertible Android tablets out there. (But it's expensive.)

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